what do you use for writing curriculum..

[MochaMel]

my 4th grader is doing the Alpha Omega Lifepacs for L.A. and Easy Grammar by Wanda C Phillips (she is doing both, b/c i don't see much in AOL for grammar and the spelling well let's just say i'm adding a supplement - i thought it would be geared for more writing assignments, but so far i am not so impressed and what they do have is written under the assumption she already knows certain things.. How can she know it if it's never been introduced before....

i am hating this new curriculum i spent extra cash on to make my and her life easier this year.. I want to add something - b/c i know wiht my oldest we did not do enough writing and now that he is in public HS he has struggled a bit and would like to avoid this problem with my dd - and i am not so creative with it and please nothing that is going to require me to be a writing whiz and prepare lots of teacher work - the 2 year old is taking up way too much time for me to give myself more work right now..

any suggestions??? thanks in advance, i am worried - b/c she too will go to regular school either next year or the year after.. and i don't want her struggling --

[lisaann]

I use Writing Strands, Easy Grammar and Sequential Spelling.

I've heard a lot of good said about Institute for Excellence in Writing. I'm going to check it out next year.

[seeHimsoon]

I use the Write Stuff Adventure.

[MochaMel]

thank you for the replies - i will check both of those out!

[hsmom23]

We just started using a workbook from Apologia, called "Jump In: A workbook for reluctant and eager writers". My 6th grader hates writing, but so far so good!!

[MochaMel]

^^ yes my dd is very reluctant - it's like pulling teeth and of course I am having a hard time being creative with ideas; so i thought maybe we should invest in something this year.. lol -

[NORAD]

I use Writing Strands, Easy Grammar and Sequential Spelling.

I've heard a lot of good said about Institute for Excellence in Writing. I'm going to check it out next year.

Lisa, you use Sequential... what do you think of it and what age are you using it for? I have been looking at it...

[lisaann]

Lisa, you use Sequential... what do you think of it and what age are you using it for? I have been looking at it...

I started using it with my son about two years ago when he was in 4th grade. It's basic premise works beautifully with both of my children but it tends to move way too fast so I've modified it to suit us. I love it and am so thankful for this method!

Their set up is to have a separate list of words for 4 days out of the week that teaches them to use a basic word pattern in different words and with prefixes and suffixes. Like this:
Day 1 Day 2 Day 3 Day 4
pawn pawns pawned pawning
yawn yawns yawned yawning

I followed this for a few months but found ds wasn't really learning the words so I've slowed it down to using Day 1's list the first week, Day 2's list the second week, Day 3's list the third week ect. It works much better for him this way.

Dd has an audio processing disorder so letter sounds are very difficult for her to "get". I use the exact same process in Sequential spelling but on much simpler words. It is working extremely well with her as well.

[NORAD]

Great! Thanks LA - I think I may try it in a while (they are k-1 ish)

[MochaMel]

Well for now we are using the Spectrum workbooks for writing - dd hates writing but so far she is liking this.. i am hopeful this will give her ideas and help her be more creative.. We are going slow.... lol

[bookworm1711]

My two sons were perhaps fortunate that their Dad (that's me) was a reading specialist, English teacher, and also writing specialist and consultant for a very large urban school district!

I moved way out of the city to live in a two story red brick farmhouse. Two years later I met and married my wife, having met her at a little country church one wintry Sunday when the roads were too bad for me to drive all the way into the city to church where I normally taught the college and career class.

I devised my own reading and writing curriculum for my two children to use. I did the same for the students in my public school high school classroom. My public school students loved my teaching style, and they learned to write well.

I was even appointed to serve for the last half dozen or so years of my teaching career on the State Board of Education committee which set the writing standards each year for the state assessment in writing.

For both reading and writing I developed a sequence of assignments from very easy to very sophisticated. I call these reading and writing ladders.

I have used these procedures successfully with early elementary through high school level students.

The students, and my own children, found it easy to learn when the learning was properly sequenced in this way.

With my own children, I found that they both learned to write well without my having to make them go through endless exercises. I think the fact that they both were good readers made it easy for them to write well.

I have lots and lots of ideas that have worked well, so if you need some ideas, just ask.

[Leigh]

Bookworm, I'm interested in hearing more about your writing lessons! Do you have a website or book? I just finished reading through the other thread that talks about boys, girls, and readiness and agree that boys are different! (Birth order also seems to make a difference, from what I've observed.) My second son is taking much more effort to teach how to write... and I could use some creative ideas.

Now Lisaann, a question for you about Sequential Spelling. (We use that too and I'm trying to modify it this year.) So, you are saying that you use the same word list every day for a week - all 25 of them? Do you have your son do any additional activities to remember the words? It is discouraging to me that my 5th grader can breeze through a list of words, getting them all correct, then turn around and write a paragraph and misspell literally every other word!

I'm thinking of switching over to Easy Grammar also. I've been told that (if it's all a student uses) it is not quite enough preparation for high school level classes, but should be just fine for elementary.

[lisaann]

Now Lisaann, a question for you about Sequential Spelling. (We use that too and I'm trying to modify it this year.) So, you are saying that you use the same word list every day for a week - all 25 of them? Do you have your son do any additional activities to remember the words? It is discouraging to me that my 5th grader can breeze through a list of words, getting them all correct, then turn around and write a paragraph and misspell literally every other word!

I just go through the same word list Monday - Thursday (Friday is our short school day ). I don't have him do any additional work but he does get as many "looks" as he needs of the basic word patterns. I write them on a small wipe-off board on Monday and leave them up for him to look at during spelling. Both of my kids are very visual and this seems to help Velcro it to their brains. I've noticed after the first day or two with new word patterns he very rarely needs additional "looks". He's never been strong in spelling but with the word pattern approach of Sequential spelling he seems to be doing much better. I strongly suspect he has some dyslexic issues. One thing I did add to the program was to write out as many spelling rules as I could get my hands on because SS does not go over them. I apply the rules as the need comes up.

Bookworm I am very interested in your method as well. I would very much like a program that incorporates both grammar and writing. I am not thrilled with teaching them both as separate subjects.

[lisaann]

FYI here's a spelling rules thread that I started back in Nov of 2007.
http://www.rr-bb.com/showthread.php?...spelling+rules

[bookworm1711]

Sorry I have taken so long to get back to this thread!

In answer to Leigh, in Post 12 above, yes, I do have a website and I have written a book.

My book is titled The Language Enrichment Program. My sons helped me "self-publish" the book. My oldest son designed the cover. My sons developed the website. Both sons kept my software and computer running. My oldest son built my computer. My youngest son installed much of the software. My book is only available from my website. You can find it if you Google the title of the book, I'm sure. I just tried it right now, and it is the top entry on the first page on the Google search results.

We had a severe storm here about July 24, 2009, and we were either struck by lightning or had a severe power surge which completely destroyed my computer and in-home network hub, as well as the garage door opener of an outbuilding. Praise the Lord that He arranged for my son to unexpectedly visit us from Arizona just then. He rebuilt the computer--only thing not new is the case.

My son came home because he had just lost his job. The Lord has answered prayer in that he is now working again for the company that laid him off, but we continue to pray that his Big O store in Phoenix continues to get enough customers, otherwise he will be let go again. He is the service manager.

I was at the dentist this morning. My wife and I had our six-month teeth cleaning appointment. The dental hygienist and I got to talking (kind of hard to do when your teeth are being cleaned!). Somehow we got on the subject of school, reading, and writing. I mentioned I had been an English teacher, reading specialist, and writing consultant. I served on the state committee that set the writing standards each year for the state assessment. I was one of only six teachers chosen out of the entire state to serve in that capacity, a post I held for six years until my retirement in 2001, though I also served in 2002 on the committee.

She asked me what I focused on in my reading program. Phonics? I said not phonics, but linguistics, which is what I was taking in graduate school at Wayne State University in Detroit. I told her I had a class for two hours: one hour was to be devoted to reading, the other to English. I soon discovered the students could not read well enough to use the English books I was provided. I decided to write my own lessons in programmed instruction format. At the end of the semester I gave my students a post test for reading comprehension. The students were in my class because as seventh graders they read at least three grades below grade level. The Stanford Achievement Test results were amazing. Eight students of the class of about 40 scored as many years ahead of their grade level as they had been behind--three of them at 11.0, and 10.6, 10.6. I showed the counselor the results, and he believed me, and said, "Mr. Bookworm1711, let's just try a little experiment. I'll transfer these students to the honors track. If they flounder, I'll move them back." They did just fine the rest of the way through junior and senior high school.

So, lisaann, and all, I accidentally discovered that teaching a particular kind of grammar using a particular kind of instruction (programmed instruction) actually helped my students read better than the regular reading instruction materials the school district had provided for me. I knew that because I had two such classes, and I let one class use my linguistic program, but not the other class. The class I let use it was the lowest of seven ability seventh grade homerooms that year. The class that did not use it was the sixth lowest ability group. The lowest ability group showed much higher achievement using the program than the class that just received the regular instruction.

My students learned to write better too.

To get back to the dentist office part of the story just today, the dental hygienist is very active at her school for her children attend there. She knows the other students and their parents very well. She told me she knows of many parents who have students that are struggling to read at the level required, so she asked for my website address, and I shared it with her.

The program I wrote is self-instructional, so any student of any age can use it independently with out the need of a teacher's help, and perhaps only rarely a very little help from a parent. It works for students of any age. I had one parent locally use it to prepare for his pilot's license, using it in my dining room, while his three children, in elementary school at the time, used it in our sun room. He told me he did well on his pilot's license test. He also told me that after he worked my linguistic program he found it so much more of a pleasure to read books he now reads them avidly.

Twenty-one student athletes at Denby High School in Detroit raised their reading comprehension and grammatical knowledge enough to get full athletic scholarships to college because of their improved ACT test scores, the coach informed me. One of those students joined the Detroit Lions, though I understand that team doesn't do so well these days, though I'm not at all into sports myself.